Design of Data Harvesting System with Radio Frequency Modules for Monitoring Performance of Solar Cells

The problem that arises in solar cell is the need for regular manual inspections to check whether the solar cells work properly. To solve the problem, it is necessary a system that can monitor the condition of the solar cell system used, that is a monitoring system. In use, solar cells is often located in the open space that requires more power and time to perform data retrieval. Monitoring system also has a lack of unknown quality of service available in solar cell monitoring network. By referring to some quality of service parameters in monitoring network, ie Throughput, delay, and data loss, it can be known the value of quality of service from network monitoring. The designed system consists of voltage sensors, current sensors, temperature sensors, light sensors, RTC, NRF24L01 modules, and microcontrollers on transmitter devices. The receiver device consists of RTC, NRF24L01 module and microcontroller. This study discusses the quality of service testing of monitoring network to distance change and the use of data transmission management. In the process, solar cell output data will be sent on the monitoring network, this data record is used to calculate the quality of service of the network. The quality of service of the network is determined by testing the data transmission. In the test is done with 3 scenarios that are designed, the delivery of data horizontally forward, sending data vetically upward, and sending data vertically down. From the research results obtained the optimal area are 25 m
²
and the minimum area are 625 m
²
with the effectiveness of data transmission management are 1.7%.